Ought have shared a video for their Sun Coming Down standout “Beautiful Blue Sky.” The video, which was directed by Bobby McHugh, is as cinematic and sprawling as the song itself as it follows movement artist Matt Drews through two parallel storylines. Watch and read a statement from the director which sets up the video’s heady concept via NPR below.

Clarity, balance and happiness can be the direct result of movement and breath, while our obsession with development, consumerism and frustration with the banalities of our everyday experience can cause feelings of nihilism and depression that at their most extreme can render us immobile and constrained. In this video, I tried to weave together two dreamy, surreal storylines that reflect these two competing states of being.

Matt Drews is the subject of this piece. He has that perfect mix of seriousness and sensitivity that can easily move back and forth between agitated immobility and tender acceptance. We shot Matt in a series of locations common to all of our experience, creating dreamy portraits that mimic the feeling of the lyrics.

We wanted the camera work to feel like Tarkovsky’s The Mirror, which employs long loose shots that work like a stream of consciousness, similar to Tim’s lyrics in the song. And in the edit, we wanted to present a structure that felt like a surreal dream that paired with my interpretation of the ideas Ought presents in the song.

Light and flowers are two recurring visual elements. You’ll notice the healthiest flowers occurring in scenes with natural light, along with breadth and movement. And the least healthy exist in lighting conditions similar to the devices (phones, laptops, TVs) that surround us. I really love the way the light in the bed works, since so many of us go to bed and wake up next to our phones and tablets. Tim’s streaming list of concerns in this scene kind of mimic the internet news ticker. Or a Facebook feed, or whatever.